Understand
by Hiasobi
Summary: They lose her year-by-year instead of day by day, simply because they don’t see her enough for that. [Magic comes at a price.]


AN: this had been sitting on my comp since forever. Started as an innocent drabble, turned into a ficlet. Still feels rough but I won't be working on it anymore. 

**Understand**

_Pre-Hogwarts_

She didn't want to admit it, but her little girl wasn't little anymore.

Grace Granger didn't like how her daughter didn't quite look into their eyes when she talks to them. How her daughter never really opens up to her anymore about her life. How her daughter wasn't exactly the same person she had thought she was and would grow up to be - how her daughter didn't seem to be just hers anymore.

It had started with a letter. A piece of parchment rolled up, tied with a red ribbon and held onto by a brown owl's talons. The beautiful bird had flown in through their open window and dropped the paper onto her 10-year-old daughter's empty plate. Dinners had been held back while they had read the letter, and absorbed what the words had meant exactly in the order it had been written in.

Daughter.

Magic.

Witch.

School.

They hadn't known what changes it would bring about exactly at that time. In the end they had let their daughter decide on what to do because it was her life, not theirs. Of course, the 10-year-old child jumped at the chance. They had humored her for a while in her excitement and then let her go off to the recommended school.

It went on well for a while. She wrote letters to them, they wrote back. She wanted and did tell them almost everything that happened to her. How beautiful the school was, how knowledgeable the teachers were, and how she hoped so much to make new friends. She told them everything and they hadn't felt left out at all.

_.:-:._

_Summer Between First – Second Year _

Then came the first summer back from the boarding school. They hadn't really noticed anything, except that she was happy. She was convinced she had chosen the right decision to go to the magic school, and she was glad she would be going back in September.

She told them about the classes she had gone to. How magic made so much beautiful, how glad she was to have magic. How she had made the much-wanted friends there, how she would write to them throughout the summer.

She had smiled and she had laughed. She was happy. Their little girl was content, so they let her go back. They let her continue to take charge of her own life.

When she had went for her school supplies, they had went with her because she as too young to access the money she needed. They had gasped and gaped at the magical town submerged in the magic they had only once seen before, but their daughter hadn't. She had beamed and had been very happy but had not been in awe or shock at the surroundings – it was like they were something of a normal thing to her now.

When they waved her goodbye when she went back to school the second year, they smiled but in the back of their minds they wondered what would happen to their daughter this year away from home, and worried for their only child. They pushed the worry back though, because she as smiling and laughing. And waving back at them she ran through the wall, making them wince, as they still expected for her to run into plain brick.

And throughout the year, they ate, worked, slept, confided in each other about their worries and wondered if their little girl was all right. They felt better after that. They realized they weren't the only one of them worrying about their child. And they read the letters together when they came carried by brown owls that pecked on their windows and doors.

_.:-:._

_Summer Between Second - Third Year_

When she came back the second summer, her eyes had looked so mature, so steady. It looked as if she had learned how to grow up quite a bit and did.

She had devoured all the books she had bought and then moved onto some of the books they had bought for her. Ordinary, everyday magic-less books. Math, Science, English – she plowed through them all and then dragged them to the local library to sign up for a card.

Their daughter read through entire sections of the library and the librarian commented on such a bright girl. Hermione had wanted to learn everything that summer. When they asked about her sudden interest she told them that no matter where magic took her – she would always still be apart of this world.

It made them feel proud of be the parents of this miraculous child.

_.:-:._

_Summer Between Third – Fourth Year_

When she came back the following summer, they had started to notice some changes. How she slept later now. How she sometimes found sudden new delight at the simplest regular things – like TV or a computer. How her eyes would light up and how they would shine with tears at the oddest times. How sometimes she had turned to talk to her daughter to find the child looking at them, her parents, with the strangest face – intense and inquisitive. How her eyes darkened in worry at the thought of her friend Harry.

How a slightly haunted look would suddenly sometimes take residence over her daughters face.

As parents they were never quite sure about the last one, and they denied it quite often.

They hadn't known to be worried or not when a letter came and their fourteen-year-old daughter had told them she was going to a school field trip for the summer only two weeks after coming home. And they weren't sure how to react to the polite man who had been told would come to pick up their daughter instead of them dropping her off for a train like before. They had no idea where to begin to decipher the looks their daughter had traded with the brown haired man, or understand fully the tight hug their child insisted on giving the intimidating black dog, even with her cat crookshanks hissing and scratching her arm from being squeezed too tightly.

They still managed to see her off with a smile. Uncertain, worried smiles, but smiles all the same.

_.:-:._

_Summer Between Fourth – Fifth Year_

And the next summer, when she came back, she barely stayed for any time at all. Two weeks into summer and the letters came again by varying, and then their little girl was saying she would be leaving. Again.

Grace had wanted to stop her. To stand up and tell this little girl-woman standing in front of her, that she should not be leaving. That her parents had never even spent much time with her yet this year, but then Hermione looked up into her mother's eyes. And there was just too much there that Grace didn't - couldn't understand.

John had simply turned away, not being able to meet their daughter's eyes.

_.:-:._

_Summer Between Fifth – Sixth Year _

When Hermione finally came back in the summer, they knew.

They had picked her up in the station and drove her home in a nice, comfortable atmosphere. They had talked about her year at school and they had smiled and laughed and chatted.

But that was it.

They understood her words and everything their daughter told them, but they couldn't understand what she didn't say and what she left out. They couldn't read between her lines and behind every reference. They looked at her and she had met them straight in the eye – but they couldn't understand what they saw there.

They couldn't read their daughter's old brown eyes, couldn't understand the look inside, didn't know when she had acquired such depths and they couldn't see her thoughts behind them. They knew then.

They knew that they had lost her.

_.: Ends :._

R&R


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